Miching Mallecho
by Walid Bitar
Should I begin to sink,
my kleptomaniacal mind
would lift the ship in question,
my mode of answering,
my mode of exploding
like a population doubling
every 20 years,
my mode of pretending
this explosion is a tune,
out of key,
like a lock that's bent,
my mode of pretending
you yourself are bent,
right angles your specialty:
head to ass squared
times ass to heels squared
equals eyes to toes squared.
I could pretend anything:
that the front is the back
side of a postcard,
so whatever I write
looks like graffiti
on the Venuses de Milo,
the Arcs of Ctesiphon,
the views of Land's End.
What's said you can't see,
no more than paint can,
and you can't hear,
no more than sound can:
your skull, as if biting
the mouth that fed it,
pokes through your skin,
decomposing tropically,
so that your ears seem
to make mincemeat of these words.
And this one consolation:
they'd make mincemeat of silence.
